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Vindu Goel reports at the NYT that Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, addressing questions from Facebook users at his second town hall meeting with the public, shared the secret of his success telling users that mistakes are good and that successful people not only learn from their mistakes but spend most of their time making mistakes. “If you’re successful, most of the things you’ve done were wrong,” said Zuckerberg. “What ends up mattering is the stuff you get right.” If you get a few big things right, he said, “you can make some pretty important changes in the world.” Zuckerberg also discussed the importance of software programming skills. “If you can code, you have the power to sit down and make something and no one can stop you,” he said, predicting that schools would eventually require everyone to learn a little coding because it sharpens analytical skills that are useful in a wide variety of professions.
When asked what he thinks about Facebook becoming synonymous with wasting time, Zuckerberg said he wasn't sure he agreed with the premise of the question. He explained everyone is told they'll have time for life after finishing school or their homework, but they forget to realize that friends and family is what matters in life. Facebook, he said, helps connect people in a way society doesn't always offer. "We're proud of our contribution there," Zuckerberg said. "If we could make people a little more connected then I think that's valuable."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by SacredSalt on Friday December 12 2014, @05:38AM
Facebook helps someone I used to find interesting share cat pictures.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by rts008 on Friday December 12 2014, @06:00AM
Mark who?
Or better yet, who cares?
(Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Friday December 12 2014, @06:54AM
Getting lots of money from the NSA helps
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Friday December 12 2014, @07:10AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @10:25AM
exactly... hes regarded as a role model just like billy gates...
its so sad, really...
And instead of empowering people and make them more knowledgeable about what are they doing on the internet, they try to dumb down everything so they only know how to press buttons... the buttons they decide that you can have.
there, now im sad.. nice going
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Friday December 12 2014, @11:01AM
... and spread those all over the internet to follow you, look after you and protect you. Feel better? I don't....
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @07:10AM
The important thing is to hate your users enough to monetize the shit out of those poor bastards. Whether that's to ads, the NSA, or anyone else.
There's your "success" right there. And I spit on it.
(Score: 1) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday December 12 2014, @12:12PM
The important thing is to hate your users enough to monetize the shit out of those poor bastards.
Nobody forces people to be monetized the shit out of - yet. Those who don't stay the fuck away from Zuck's privacy trap deserve everything they get.
The real problem will come when FB is so pervasive that those who refuse to do FB will be seen as strange, hiding something, worthy of stricter surveillance, or just plain denied certain services. That time is not far in the future I'm afraid :(
(Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Friday December 12 2014, @07:38AM
It's "being a dick".
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @09:08AM
1. Have rich parents
2. Get lucky
Everything else is delusions of grandeur.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @10:30AM
people think to make money is 90% talent, 10% luck
more like 40% talent 60% luck. And you can break down the 40% talent into 30% willing to do despicable things, 10% brains to put everything together...
That delusion is empowered by all the people who is not billionare, but think they could be if they tried very very hard...
Its like people fear the zombies but they are already here among us, and they are majority
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @09:57AM
1) be born white
2) stable household with two well-off parents (dentist + psychiatrist)
3) grow up in a small community that has an extremely low poverty rate, good schools, and is close to a very large city with a good economy
4) private tutoring by a professional software developer
5) private preparatory school
6) Harvard
7) a mixture of hard work and dumb luck
See, it's so easy, anyone can do it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @10:34AM
and you forget the despicable things... everybody forgets to mention that always
You have to steal mails of people, even the passwords of their accounts (back then, there was no api with authorization token), steal all the links and spam everybody else... just like a virus...
I couldnt do that and get a good sleep at night, so I guess i dont qualify as rich-to-be
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @04:26PM
Oh come on, companies are queuing up to employ black people in highly paid jobs. The problem is they can't find enough qualified black people to employ.
Everything is set up to give blacks an advantage, and all they have to do is work hard at school and gain a decent education. However, crime statistics appear to show that black people are more interested in pursuing a criminal career than working hard at school. How is that anyone's fault but their own?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:10AM
You forgot "psychopathy".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @02:10AM
Being a joo helps.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Friday December 12 2014, @12:07PM
I'm not really interested in the secret of his success. Frankly it had more to do with having accidentally created the right thing at the right time, more than anything else.
But I would like to know more about the secret of his being an arrogant douche. That would be a great article.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday December 12 2014, @12:09PM
Tony Robbins says "success leaves clues" but he seems to never fully explore the implications. Over the years, I've noticed the most important factors in success are outside of a person's control. What family they're born into, being in the right place at the right time, and so on. The stuff you can control, all things being equal, usually aren't enough for success. Then we look at successful people and try to find a formula (remember that story recently about Google's secret to success?) and say anyone can follow the formula and be successful.
Failure that Zuckerberg talks about is a good example - some people can't afford to fail. Failure would ruin them financially for life. Then there's Bill Gates, who literally (yes, literally) could not fail when he started Microsoft. If his company had flamed out, he would have just gone back to Harvard on an all-expense-paid education. If I had started a company and dropped out of college, I would never have recovered in life if it had failed given where I started in life.
I would say Zuckerberg is wrong that commodity coding skills matter. Coders are a dime a dozen, and ideas are a dime a dozen. Both together produce some outliers which are successful and stick around. But these are exceptions. What happens to all the people who were wrong and we never hear from them again? That's the problem with looking only at successful people to find clues. You can also find clues in the failures.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Informative) by metamonkey on Friday December 12 2014, @03:37PM
It's called the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. [wikipedia.org]
There's tons of people who tried and failed and they would tell you they did the same thing. Gave it their all, tried and failed and tried again and unfortunately kept failing, sometimes because of situations completely outside their control.
I had a small business that was doing very well until the 2008 crash. Then everything changed. The industry changed. Nobody spent any money. I spent years working my ass off, trying new things, reinventing the business over and over to adapt to changing market conditions. After 5 years of killing myself I had to give up and get a real job. Lots of other people did/are doing the same thing.
But you'll only hear from the few who "followed their dreams" and it worked out. "Gosh, I'd rather follow my dreams and fail than never try at all...." Fuck you. I tried and failed and it cost me years of income, stability and my health. But nobody's asking me for interviews.
And if I did, people would just say I "didn't try hard enough" or "didn't want it bad enough."
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday December 12 2014, @04:29PM
We can learn more from your story than all the success stories. Thanks for sharing it.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 1) by jbruchon on Friday December 12 2014, @01:00PM
I'm just here to listen to the latest song about butts.